


A Game of Chance

by barrelrider



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, M/M, Unilock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrelrider/pseuds/barrelrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a witching hour fire alarm leads Sherlock Holmes and his fellow dorm mates to evacuate their building, he meets someone he never expected, never wanted, and always needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game of Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Found on my tumblr here: http://jwlives.tumblr.com/post/100958242272/  
> All credit to iggycat on tumblr for the original prompt (http://iggycat.tumblr.com/post/100539179472/)  
> This was an impromptu fic at midnight that never meant to see the light of day, but now it's one of my more popular pieces on tumblr. I hope the AO3 community enjoys it as well! (Ps. Keep an eye out for a possible sequel...)

It’s three in the morning on a Wednesday. Sherlock Holmes has two midterms, one presentation, and one essay due that day. He also has to read two chapters of a textbook that reads like a car manual.

So, naturally, he’s awake dissecting a pair of pig lungs he stole from the biology lab.

He’s in pyjamas, so the thought of sleep  _had_  occurred at one point or another in the night. It’s long since passed, though. He scratches his t-shirt covered chest and the hand returns to the microscope which he also stole from the biology lab. It isn’t that he doesn’t have one or can’t afford one. His brother bought him one, actually, as a Uni present. It’s for that very reason that Sherlock doesn’t use it - his  _brother_  touched it. It’s unholy and not worthy of swine alveoli. His halo of dark curls is outlined by the single lamp he has on, which casts his entire profile in a warm glow that contradicts his reputation.

He didn’t steal the lamp from the biology lab, thank you very much. He stole it from his room mate, George or Guy or something. His last name is Lestrade. He’s okay. His choice of lamp is abysmal but it will suffice. Said room mate is passed out in his room and Sherlock is at the kitchen table, curiouser and curiouser. He removes the slide from the microscope and prepares the lungs for another cut from which to observe. He’s considering another cup of tea as he mentally muses about the respiratory systems of both pigs and humans, and he wonders if he’ll ever need this for his future crime work. One can only hope, he supposes.

And then, the fire alarm goes off.

Not his own, of course. The unseen guest, with its incessant, high-pitched screams, sounds like it’s coming from upstairs (and it smells like someone has burned expensive marijuana). He wrinkles his nose and groans, all but slamming his instruments onto the table with great agitation and turning the microscope off. He hears Lestrade grumbling unintelligibly from the bedroom, and he’s thankful that he doesn’t have to explain the ridiculous dorm procedure to the other boy: One alarm goes off, the entire building evacuates. Standard rule. Highly inconvenient and rather pointless, since alarms go off at least once a week and it’s never anything serious.

As he grabs coat, Sherlock considers simply hiding in the closet and having Lestrade inform the head counting officers that his room mate is conveniently in Peru and therefore couldn’t make it to the evacuation. But, then again, he can hear shouts of upset from upstairs and he smirks despite himself. Perhaps it will be interesting.

The cold night air greets him in a rush as he opens his door with a scowl. Perhaps it  _would_  be interesting if it wasn’t bloody cold. He shuffles outside with a dignified sniff and shoves his hands in his pockets, slouching over and glowering as he heads to the left and down the stairs, mixing into a tiny sea of fellow evacuees. Some fifty other students - Lestrade included, lagging in the rear, bleary and lost - file onto the dew-covered grass and Sherlock scans the crowd and glares at every one of them, as if they had all played a part in what had transpired. Sirens are closing in and he spots the trio of pot heads cowering nervously.

It’s while he’s looking out over everyone else that someone bumps into him with an uttered apology. They are warm, he feels in their brief contact; just woken up, clearly. He looks over to offer some snide remark to them, but any and all words fizzle and die in his mouth when he sees a very  _odd_ sight to his right. A boy a few years older than he is in nothing but his pants and is huddled into himself, shivering. He’s adorned with delightful sandy blond bedhead and, bless him, his eyes are closed tight, like it’s all a bad dream and he’s still asleep. Sherlock cocks his head and feels strangely endeared by it. He spares a glance down his tan body, and —

He’s fit.  _Very_  fit, in fact. He must be an athlete of some sort; his arms are toned and his stomach is lean and muscular, but not overly so. It’s just right. ( _For what?_  Sherlock asks himself, unsure of the measure but certain that it is, in any case, just bloody right.) Sherlock licks his lips despite himself. When the stranger blinks his eyes open, Sherlock looks straight ahead and swallows, wondering just why his mouth is so dry.

"Wha’s happ’ning?" the boy asks, his voice a gruff, sleep-robbed grumbled. A firetruck pulls to the car park nearby, along with a few police cars. And thus the count begins. The nearly-naked boy cranes his neck to look out that way, along with most of the bored-looking crowd. Other students in dorm buildings across the yard are out on their balconies, watching. It beats studying, after all.

"Fire," Sherlock replies coolly, since no one else will. "Or an alarm for such, at least. Standard proceeding."

When he’s met with the boy’s face, Sherlock feels that same dryness in his throat once more. He has dark blue eyes still touched by the Sandman, and despite his shivering and goosebumps and now presumably colder skin, he looks like the very description of the word ‘warmth’. “Oh,” he replies with a sniff (congestion, most likely) and a nod. He rubs his arms and cracks his neck, apparently waking up more and more with every passing second. “Shit. What time is it?”

With a glance to his watch, Sherlock spares Lestrade a half-second’s thought as he tells the stranger, “Three o’five.” The groan he receives in kind makes him smirk in amusement.

“ _Shit_ ,” the boy repeats, lifting his head to the sky, his eyes closed in dismay. “This was  _not_  worth waking up for.” The lights from the street outline his profile in white and Sherlock thinks it’s enrapturing to see how his Adam’s apple bobs up and down, complimented by the light. The boy exhales through his nose and returns to a relatively normal stance, although he’s still apparently cold, judging by the goosebumps painted on his skin. “Why do we have to come out here?” he whines quietly, mostly to himself.

Sherlock takes it upon himself to respond not because he needs to but because, for some inexplicable reason, he wants to. “A safety measure, probably. They’re searching the dorms now,” he nods to the firefighters weaving in and out of the rooms, “and the police will make sure we’re all accounted for." He sighs at length. "I was examining  _lungs_ , too,” he grumbles and swears that if they’re missing there will be an actual fire and Hell to pay. Instead of planning his would-be revenge, though, he looks towards the stranger who is staring at him with growing concern. Sherlock waves a hand dismissively. “Pig’s lungs. Not human. No need for alarm.” He hears the other boy chuckle briefly at the pun and tendrils of pride tickle Sherlock’s heart.

"Didn’t know we could take parts home from lab," his conversation partner replies with a scratch to the back of his head, looking befuddled, as if he’s reviewing a mental list of rules for the bio lab. Sherlock certainly  _doesn’t_  get a good look at his chest, and he certainly  _doesn’t_  stare at the happy trail leading into crimson boxer-briefs.

"We can’t," Sherlock says. "I stole them." He says it right as a police officer passes him. The officer frowns and Sherlock smiles charmingly, which convinces the officer to keep walking after clicking his number counter in Sherlock’s face. Then, it’s back to scowling. But when he looks to his right, the boy is smiling with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and any glare Sherlock has in him is gone, replaced with a series of blinks and uncomfortable shifting as he feels his cheeks warm. "What?" he mumbles defensively.

The boy chuckles and folds his arms across his chest once again, his back straight and his shoulders set. “You’re the one who keeps stealing stuff, aren’t you?” he asks confidently. Sherlock says nothing, which he knows gives himself away. Maybe he wants to. The boy continued. “I’m an aide in the lab and I take inventory at the end of the week. I know what’s what and where it should be and how many we should…” His words are broken with an endearing yawn that leaves Sherlock’s toes curling in his shoes. “… we should have,” he concludes. He smirks and tilts his head. “Tell me you’re at least a student and not some random person selling microscopes and pig parts on eBay.”

Sherlock huffs, slightly offended. And after all his expressed knowledge of useless safety procedures, too. He grabs his wallet - always on his person - out of his pyjama bottoms and shoves his student i.d. card at the boy, who squints at it under what little light is offered. “‘Sherlock Holmes’,” he mumbles. Handing the card back, he asks with an even wider smirk, “You showed me yours; should I show you mine?” His teeth are flashed in a caddish grin that makes him look younger than he is.

Sherlock pockets his card and wallet and blinks, his face void of response. The boy is unnerved by it, he judges, going off of his falling expression and uncomfortable shifting. Sherlock’s brows furrow, and he feels no less confused. Moving on, the boy clears his throat and extends his hand. “Well, anyway. I’m John. John Watson,” he says with a returning smile. Sherlock finds it hard not to return it as he shakes his hand. “Nice to meet the thief whose made my job a living Hell.”

"It wasn’t my intention," Sherlock says with a ducked head. He means it, too. Typically he doesn’t care if he makes anyone’s life harder or not; it’s more their response to a situation than he who makes things difficult, anyway. But caught red-handed, he can’t help but feel a sort of guilt for his crime. It’s unrelated to the attractive boy beside him, of course.

John opens his mouth to reply when there’s a sudden shift in the crowd. The firefighters, returned from their scour of the offending flat, are chatting with the officers, and with a point into the confused crowd the officers move like dogs on the hunt. Very soon, they are grabbing the three-man cause of this colossal waste of time, all of whom are only half-heartedly struggling against their grips. Sherlock sneers as they’re taken towards the car and the all-clear is given by a firefighter. Through the shuffling of the crowd and the murmurs of the students, Sherlock hears John say something, and he turns to look his way with an expectant look.

"Nothing," John says with a smile. "I just said, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain. Just ask next time, yeah?" He nudges Sherlock, who looks like he doesn’t know what to do with the gesture.

Nevertheless, he replies. “Where’s the fun in that?” he asks with a quirked brow, to which John smirks and chuckles.

They begin to walk in the same direction, and John continues to rub his arms to fight the cold. “What are you studying?” he asks after a moment’s pause. “You wouldn’t be stealing biology equipment if you weren't a student. Unless you’re just a klepto.”

"Chemistry," Sherlock explains, "with a slight interest in biology and a more preoccupying interest in what’s often cited as the strange and bizarre." Without thinking, he sheds his coat and offers it to John, who looks at him much like a dog does when its master offers a rare treat. "I don’t need it," Sherlock explains, having to look away to keep his composure. "My room’s just that way. 221b." He tells himself it’s because John’s shivering is annoying, but he knows that’s a lie.

Blinking, slightly stunned by the offer, John mumbles, “Thank you,”  and takes the coat gratefully. He puts it on and hunkers down inside. It’s just slightly too long for him. “I’m in 221c, actually. We’re neighbours.” John smiles over at Sherlock, who eyes him from the corners of his eyes. “Come to think of it, I’ve seen you down at the laundromat a few times with Greg,” he continues.

Sherlock frowns, a furrow in his brow. “Who?” he asks sincerely.

John tilts his head, bemused. “Greg Lestrade,” he replies. “I think he’s your room mate? He’s a friend of a friend of mine.” Sherlock nods and hums what he hopes sounds like an ‘ _Ah, **that**  Greg_' hum. John nods in reply and walks along with him, hands in the pockets of Sherlock's coat. Silence settles briefly, during which both of the boys think on similar trains of thought. Only John voices his, however. “Unless he's your boyfriend,” he says casually, shrugging a shoulder. “But it'd be pretty bad to not remember your own boyfriend's name.”

Sherlock thinks it’s odd that John isn’t looking at him anymore. He doesn’t consider it when he says, “No,” but he does notice how quickly John looks over at him again, and something stirs in his gut. “He’s not. Just my room mate.”

Something like relief spreads onto John’s face. “Right,” he laughs and grins with a lick of his lips that makes Sherlock, once and again, swallow. Their steps stop at the same time outside of 221b, and John shrugs off the coat and hands it back to Sherlock, who immediately detects a different sort of scent and warmth on it; whose toes curl with delight in his shoes. “Thanks for the coat,” John says as he takes a few steps backwards towards his flat. Sherlock doesn’t go inside immediately, even after he feels a sleepy Lestrade push by him, grumbling something about a calculus test in the morning. Instead, he watches John slip inside his flat, wave goodbye, and close the door.

He’s the only one on the walkway now. It’s three ten in the morning, his watch claims, and Sherlock holds his coat nearer to him and buries his nose in the spot where John’s broad back had hit. His eyes close. He counts his own rapid heartbeat and begins ticking off deductions, one by one, about why he’s responding in such an alien way.

_It’s early in the morning. You’re tired, but you can’t sleep. You didn’t expect conversation. You never do. You wish the evacuation had lasted longer so you could remain with him a moment longer. You found him physically attractive, which is perturbing; archive for later evaluation. You won’t pursue him. Even if he didn’t mock you for your interests. Even if he smiled at you. Even if he **talked**  to you at all. Even if he…_

And then, the door to 221c opens; and then, as though summoned by Sherlock’s thoughts, John pops his head out of his door frame (and Sherlock shoves his coat behind his back in embarrassment, all his trains of thought stopped). He wears a shy smile as he says, “Earlier down on the grass, I, ah…” He giggles, a high-pitched, happy sound that Sherlock could get high off of. “I said, ‘I’ll forgive you if you give me your number’. Flat numbers don’t count.” He bites his lip and holds out a small piece of paper to Sherlock, whose eyebrows are sky high and who wordlessly walks to the door and takes it from him, spellbound and shocked. “So here I am,” John continues, “giving you mine. Phone number. My phone number. You got my flat number, too, but-” Knowing he’s rambling (and knowing Sherlock knows too), John takes a breath and concludes with, “Text me sometime. I’ve always wanted to talk to someone about pig lungs over coffee.” He chews his inner cheek and glances down to the floor, then back up at the dumb-founded Sherlock, before nodding and stepping shyly back into his own flat. The door quietly clicks shut, and Sherlock is left standing outside of 221c with more questions than answers.

He heads back into his own flat a few minutes later when he realises John isn’t coming back out to tell him it was all a prank. He closes and locks his door and leans his back against it. He ignores Greg pissing in the loo with the door wide open and complaining about that damned alarm. He sits at the table, ignoring the lungs and the microscope and everything else but the note with John’s number and an encouraging ‘ _My phone’s always on x JW_ ' scrawled in sloppy font worthy of a doctor.

Sherlock plucks his phone from its resting place on the table and enters in John’s number. He begins to consider what he’s going to say to him, and why he’s even put this random boy’s number in his phone, and why any of it  _matters_  at all, when he’s interrupted. ”Saw you chatting up John out in the yard,” comes Lestrade’s voice over the sound of the toilet flushing. “Funny; I didn’t know he was gay. He’s had five or six girlfriends but he’s been in a dry spell, lately. Must be headed in the other direction.” The tap is turned on as Greg washes his hands.

Sherlock tilts his head and watches the text input on his phone blink on and off, teasing him as it waits for him to type. “Why do you say that?” he asks without looking over his shoulder in the direction of the loo.

A mocking snort is his first reply. Sherlock’s eyes narrow slightly. Then: “He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” says Lestrade as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. And he leaves it at that, heading into his bedroom with a call of goodnight and a reminder to get some sleep before sunrise and mumbles about possible bisexuality. His bedroom door closes and Sherlock is left alone in the kitchen at three fifteen in the morning on a Wednesday, with two midterms, a presentation, an essay and two chapters of reading waiting for him just around the corner.

He unplugs his microscope and freezes the remaining pig gore. He washes his hands and his face and keeps his coat on his bed when he lies down to finally go to sleep. He’s exhausted now, suddenly, as if his heart is heavier in his chest with the odd cocktail of emotions he’s feeling. Sherlock closes his eyes and sees John’s face, handsome and confident, behind his eyelids. He searches his tumultuous mind for all the times he may have glimpsed at John, and all the times he’d just missed him, and every chance they could have met, both fully clothed and awake, not at three in the morning on the grass during an idiotic fire procedure, and he wonders where they would have gotten from all those ‘what if’s.

He texts him quickly while he still has the courage. His alarm is set for seven in the morning and he hates himself for having to get up so early. But at least he’ll be sleeping, and when he wakes up, perhaps John will have replied.

_Lattes with lungs are the only lattes I drink. SH_

Sherlock’s eyes close. He relaxes into his bed and wills sleep to take him.

Before it does, he hears his phone vibrate once with a new text message, and he turns over, face in his pillow, and smiles.


End file.
